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Lucy Letby “tried four times to kill” a baby and “succeeded” on the final attempt, a jury has been told. The former Chester nurse stands accused of killing seven babies, allegedly injecting them with air and insulin, and attempting to murder 10 others.
Manchester Crown Court today heard about the alleged murder of ‘Child I’.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson said: “This is a case where we allege Lucy Letby tried four times to kill her.
“[Child I] was resilient but ultimately at the fourth attempt Lucy Letby succeeded and killed her.”
Letby is alleged to have injected air into the child’s stomach through a nasogastric tube.
In the second alleged incident, a nightshift colleague at the Countess of Chester Hospital recalled that Letby was standing in the doorway of a darkened room in the Neo-natal unit.
The prosecution added that Letby commented on Child I looking pale, at which point the fellow nurse is said to have turned on the light and saw the child.
Child I “appeared to be at the point of death and was not breathing”, Mr Johnson said, citing the nurse.
The prosecutor then asked jurors have Letby could make the observation of Child I’s appearance by looking into a darkened room.
He also described the alleged murder of this child as an “extreme example even by the standards of this overall case”.
Letby faces 22 charges concerning 17 babies.
The first alleged incident of air injection with Child I is said to have taken place just days after the former nurse attempted to murder another child, ‘Child H’.
Jurors were today told that Letby tried to murder this child on two successive night shifts in September 2015.
They heard that the child suffered two “profound” collapses which required resuscitation by chest compressions with the use of adrenaline.
The baby girl is, however, said to have showed “dramatic improvement” after being transferred to another hospital, before she later returned to the Countess of Chester and was eventually discharged.
Mr Johnson said: “It is a notable fact in the case of [Child H] and others that as soon as children were removed from the Countess of Chester and the sphere of influence of Lucy Letby, it was often followed by their sudden and remarkable recovery.”
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